The June 21, 2000 launch of the Festival inter­national de Jardins de Métis will provide a gateway to the avant-garde in garden design and will be the rendezvous for top Quebec and foreign artists committed to renewing the art of gardening for the 21st century.

     Organizers of this international garden festival have called on innovative and dynamic designers for the layout of the festival site in Grand-Métis, Quebec, and for the creation of temporary gardens, which will be the highlight of the first edition of this annual event.

Site designers
A landscape and architecture design competition was held last August to choose a concept for the overall design of the site; top honours went to Atelier in situ and VLAN paysage. Atelier in situ is composed of architects Genevieve L'Heureus and Stephane Pratte, and Annie Lebel of Matane, the group which distinguished itself with the Grand Prix d'excellence from the Ordre des architects in 1998 for the recycling of the Zone building in Montreal. For the Métis project, Atelier in situ joined forces with a young team of landscape architects, VLAN paysage, comprised of Micheline Clouard and Julie Saint-Arnault.

     Together, they designed "an ingenious and persuasive project that presents a strong idea of where landscape space is based not on form but rather on meaning," according to the competition jury of Kurt Forster, director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and Alexander Reford and Phillipe Poullaoeuc-Gonidic, co-founders of the festival.

Garden designers of the first annual festival
Festival organizers chose nine designers (artists, architects and landscape architects) from North America and Europe. They will create and produce temporary gardens for this first edition of the festival, encouraging an exchange of ideas and demonstrating from the start that the Festival international de jardins de Métis is an international and interdisciplinary event. Benefiting from the proximity of the historic gardens created by Elsie Reford, these temporary gardens will build a bridge between tradition and modernism, furthering the advancement of knowledge and renewal of expressions in the art of the garden.

     For more information on the festival, contact Les Jardins de Métis, Case Postale 242, Mont-Joli, PQ G5H 3L1, Tel (418) 775-2221.